Sunday, June 29, 2014

I made these for a snack for my daughters and their friends. This is my recipe, though I did read about a dozen recipes
online to get an idea of what kinds of proportions I needed to be looking at.
This recipe made 12 and come out to about 90 calories each.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Dinner last night was tacos with lettuce replacing the shells.
The filling is green lentils mixed with toasted walnuts. This looks
odd, but tasted so good! I got the recipe from oh she glows, though I did not use as many walnuts in mine.

Next to the "taco" is some couscous with
barberries and kalamata olives.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Someone
let me know that the Happy Herbivore’s cookbooks were on sale as a
Kindle purchase for $2.99 each—so I bought the 4 that were that cheap.

Last night I made Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas. I have made a similar
recipe in the past and really enjoyed it, but in her cookbook there was
an enchilada sauce recipe. Now I live in Texas and I know Mexican food;
I make my own red and green enchilada sauces and they are wonderful, if
I do say so myself. :) So I tried the red sauce in her book and it
really is good. She uses a bit of cocoa powder in it, so it has a
reminiscence of a mole, but really did taste good. I put the leftover
sauce into a Mason jar and have it for leftovers now.

I also made a
vegan Queso sauce. This one uses cashews, as do a lot of the fake
cheese sauces that I see, and as usual, it tasted too much of cashews
last night; but I just put some on my leftovers and it is really good
now. I made the sauce and then dumped in a can of mild Rotel tomatoes
and green chilies. Leftovers also went into a Mason jar.

The smokey part of the enchiladas is from 1 teaspoon of
liquid smoke, so you could use whatever kind of filling you like and
just add that. I didn’t think it would be very good, but I was so very
wrong.

You can see from the top picture that I did not bother to roll out each enchilada, rather, I made it casserole style. I am all for quick and easy!

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

I
have tomatoes! I also have birds, which is why I picked the tomatoes a couple of days early. I picked several in my garden today, Cherokee Purple
and Black Cherry. These are so good that I put them on my tofu
sandwich. The sandwich is the Spicy Peanut Tofu sandwich that I posted a
few months ago, but instead of making my own vegan chipotle-flavored
mayo, I mashed a fresh avocado with some freshly squeezed lime juice.
Then I put some tomato slices on it. Don't forget the fresh cilantro--the flavor makes everything just pop! Who would want meat after a
sandwich like this?

Friday, June 13, 2014

Today I am going to talk about a clean kitchen. I live in a tiny house that was built in 1955. The kitchen only has about 3 linear feet of counter space! I was cleaning in there last week and got behind the stove, something that should have been done at least a couple of times per year but has not been done for at least two years. I know, blech. Anyway, I wanted to try using natural cleaning products again. The last few times I wanted to do this I bought some baking soda, diluted it in some water, and found that it did not seem to do much other than remove odors. Now that is great, but I wanted something that would remove grease, dirt, dust, etc. This time I looked around on the internet and came up with this recipe for a multipurpose cleaner (it is not the same as any that I found, but if you do a search you will find many that are very close to this one):2 teaspoons liquid Castile soap (I made this by cutting off 1/3 bar of KIRK'S Original Coco Castile soap and dissolving it in a mason jar with some warm water in it)2 teaspoons Arm & Hammer Washing Soda1/2 teaspoon 20 Mule Team Borax4 cups warm waterDissolve the Borax in a bit of the warm water and microwave it to get it hot enough if necessary. Mix all of the ingredients in a 32-ounce spray bottle, putting the Borax water in first. Discard any extra warm water. If you want to make it smell good, add a few drops of essential oil. I used Orange oil and Lemon oil, about 10 drops of each.This stuff removed all of the grease on the wall behind the stove which had been there for a long time and it did it quickly. Here is the other part of this: use one of those micro-fiber cloths. I looked online and it was expensive to buy 12 of them, over $12 plus shipping. But I went to a local store and found 12 of the same sized cloths for $7.95. Done! These cloths are amazing! My mom sent me one last year and I have used it on mirrors and windows, but it works on everything. The package that I bought comes with three different colors of cloths, so I am going to use the orange ones for the bathrooms, the green for the kitchen, and the yellow for the rest of the house.